Speaking in the Paul VI grand hall of the Vatican, the Argentine cardinal warned the Catholic Church against focusing too much on matters close to home—advice that came against the backdrop of a papacy that had been consumed by infighting among Vatican officials, a dwindling flock in Europe and secular trends in the West.

The 76-year-old Father Jorge, as he is known back home, said Roman Catholicism needed to shift its focus outward, to the world beyond Rome—rather than being "self-referential," he said. Its core mission was humility, dignity and justice. It should help the poor.

It was a week before the secret conclave to elect the new pontiff would begin. But the speech sowed the seeds of one of Catholicism's boldest moves—the election of a pope from the New World, a man likely to steer the church's focus toward social justice and the problems of the world's periphery, rather than on the intrigue and controversy of its central administration.

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This account, based on interviews with four cardinals, lifts the curtain on the dynamic that led the church's highest officials to shun the European basin from which Catholicism has drawn most of its leaders. Just before his speech, at a dinner of English-speaking cardinals, the future pope's name had come up over a meal of soup and wine but hadn't generated a buzz. "The speech was decisive," said one voting European cardinal.

"He spoke of the need for catechesis and the need to address the poor…the question of justice and the dignity of the human person," said a voting U.S. cardinal.

The call to project the church outward, not inward, propelled the Argentine prelate into contention in the first round of voting with two of Catholicism's most prominent cardinals.

ENLARGE

A puff of smoke announced the Argentinian's selection as pope.
Reuters

The other two—Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan and Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican's office for appointing bishops—were longtime acolytes of Benedict XVI, giving them what many cardinals thought was an inside track to the papacy. By the fifth and decisive round, Cardinal Bergoglio had surpassed both.

The election of Cardinal Bergoglio, known now as Pope Francis, doesn't mean the church will change its doctrine. Pope Francis is expected to uphold church teachings, ranging from its opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage to its requirement of priestly celibacy. But he is likely to create a new narrative for the church, one less focused on the inner workings of the Vatican and more on social justice.

"Sometimes when you're dealing with a crisis, you kick the ball in a different direction. And that's what this pope has done. It's to say: What I stand for is a particular gospel way of life and witness," British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster, said in an interview.

Benedict's resignation on Feb. 28 opened the door to a flurry of unusually frank discussions among cardinals in the week that followed. Unlike the conclave that followed Pope John Paul II's death in 2005, cardinals didn't spend time in mourning. Instead, their deliberations could turn immediately to the biggest challenges facing the church—the rise of secular trends, management of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank and the need to address a shift Catholicism's demographics toward the southern hemisphere.

After hours, the cardinals met in private to home in on candidates. On March 5, after they had spent the day in the talks known as the General Congregation, a group of them from around the English-speaking world gathered inside North American College, a school nestled on a hill above the Vatican, where U.S. bishops send seminarians to train for the priesthood. A banquet table was set up beneath a chandelier inside the Red Room, which is trimmed with red marble pilasters and oil canvases depicting cardinals.

Sitting down to saucers of soup, the cardinals discussed "five or six" names of papal candidates, said one U.S. cardinal. That roster included two of the names that were most frequently being mentioned by the media: Cardinal Ouellet, a former Archbishop of Quebec, and Cardinal Scola of Milan. The future pope's name was also dropped into the conversation, the U.S. cardinal said.

A spokesman for Cardinal Scola declined to comment. Reached by phone Friday evening, Cardinal Ouellet said, "I have nothing to say about the conclave. I have a very serious oath about what was going on inside." A Vatican spokesman declined to comment on conclave proceedings.

Cardinal O'Connor, who was among the invitees of the dinner, declined to say who first mentioned Cardinal Bergoglio as a papal candidate. But he added: "His name began to be thrown into the ring: Maybe this is the man?"

Many cardinals initially believed Cardinal Bergoglio, 76, was probably too old to become pope, especially coming in the wake of Benedict XVI, who cited his age and frailty as reasons for his resignation. "We came into this whole process thinking: The next pope has to be vigorous and therefore probably younger. So there you have a man who isn't young. He's 76 years old. The question is does he still have vigor?" said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

American cardinals are heavily courted for support in papal elections. As a potential bloc of votes inside the conclave, the Americans are "very powerful" because they are outnumbered only by cardinals from Italy, Cardinal O'Connor said.

American cardinals also run archdioceses that are among the biggest donors to the Catholic church and to the papacy. Another asset that would have worked in the U.S. cardinals' favor is a lack of unity among Italians that has manifested itself in past conclaves, said the U.S. cardinal.

But as evening wore on, and glasses of red and white wine began to flow, it became clear that this time, the Americans, too, fostered diverging views. "I thought the American cardinals were quite divided about where to go," said Cardinal O'Connor, who didn't enter the conclave because he is above the voting-age limit of 80 years.

"Americans are particularly rugged individualists. We get along, but we all have our own point of view," the U.S. cardinal said.

Cardinal George of Chicago said he couldn't remember the evening but said it was "entirely possible" that Cardinal Bergoglio came up in conversations over a meal at the college. "Every night it's something different. So there are different conversations going on," the cardinal said in an interview in the Red Room on Friday. He declined to discuss the conclave.

Later that week, it was Cardinal Bergoglio's time to address his peers. Unlike the speeches before him, the Argentine kept his address short—less than four minutes, several cardinals said. That got him noticed.

It hadn't been the first time that Cardinal Bergoglio had mentioned the inward-looking nature of the church.

"We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of self-referential church," the cardinal said in an interview to an Italian journalist last year. "It's true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that's sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former."

"He speaks in a very straightforward way. And so perhaps—more than the content—it was simply a reminder that here is someone who has authenticity in such a way that he's a wonderful witness to the discipleship," said Cardinal George about the speech.

On March 12, the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel and cut themselves from outside communication. In the first ballot that night, the cardinals who garnered significant votes were Cardinals Bergoglio, Scola and Ouellet. Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston also drew votes. Black smoke rose from the chapel's smokestack, signifying no choice had been made, and the cardinals adjourned for the day.

On Wednesday, Cardinal Scola's support began to erode. Though Italian, the Milan cardinal was struggling to draw support from his countrymen, one European cardinal said. That left Italian cardinals divided among a range of candidates, with some starting to coalesce around Cardinal Bergoglio.

Members of another potential voting bloc—"Ratzingerian" cardinals who are close to Benedict XVI—were also divided between cardinals Scola and Ouellet, both of whom have deep ties with the former pope and are considered theological and intellectual admirers of his.

By the final round of voting, the opposition blocs had dissolved, with many of its voters joining into to push Cardinal Bergoglio past the 77-vote threshold needed to become pope.

Corrections & Amplifications An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as Cormack Murphy O'Connor.

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